Posted
by
timothyon Saturday April 18, 2009 @03:30PM
from the umlauts-defy-gravity dept.

lpress writes "Symmetric, 100 Mbps service in Stockholm, costs $11/month. Conditions in every city are different, but part of the explanation for the low cost is that the city owns a municipal fiber network reaching every block. They lease network access to anyone who would like to offer service. The ISPs, including incumbent telephone and cable companies, compete on an equal footing."

like the "idealogical barrier" that prevents the Postal Service from doing an efficient job at anything.

When I was a child, my father often spoke proudly about the U.S. Postal Service, bragging about how a first-class letter could get to just about anywhere in the United States in just 2 days, for the cost of a 7 cent stamp.

Today, it costs 6 times as much, and as often as not takes 6 times as long. What is wrong with this picture?

First-class postage in the US was never exactly 7 cents. It went straight from 6 (1968) to 8 cents (1971). It's very difficult to compare prices over time meaningfully, but in inflation-adjusted terms postage rates have actually held pretty constant since about the 70s. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_United_States_Postal_Service_rates [wikipedia.org]> Wikipedia. Given that the two main costs of the USPS are fuel and labor, which have gone up faster than consumer prices as a whole, th

yeah, Sweden is socialist country in many areas and for many decades, but it kinda works so well that free-market evangelists never mention anything about it, they prefer talking about Cuba.

Both Sweden and the US are mixed economies. The word socialism is completely taboo in Sweden as much as it is in the US. Even when you discuss systems where there clearly is socialism, such as the public road system.

Both Sweden and the US are mixed economies. The word socialism is completely taboo in Sweden as much as it is in the US. Even when you discuss systems where there clearly is socialism, such as the public road system.

Well, when the party that has ruled Sweden for most of the past century and still has the most voters is called the "social democrats" I think you can have a guess how "taboo" socialism is here. It is true we are a mixed economy however. The main difference to places like the US is that we don't pretend to be capitalist. We have a reasonably free market with necessary regulations that is complemented with a comprehensive welfare state. Oh, and over here "liberal" is something you accuse politicians of NOT being, as opposed to the surreal American situation where you're apparently pro freedom but anti liberty. Doublethink at its finest.

In Western Europe socialist is not the same as communist. Socialists believe in a government-corrected free-market (e.g. Sweden) in contrast to communists who believe in a government-planned economy (e.g. Cuba).Personally I think prices for products depend more on the local market situation, the price people are willing and able to pay for goods and services. In Sweden telecom services, house rents and medical services are cheap, but food, alcohol, cars and taxes are expensive.

There is a world of difference between Sweden and Cuba. Cuba is a totalitarian regime with communist economy. Sweden is free market economy and democratic society. The so-called "socialist economy" has never been precisely defined, but *please* don't get confuse what's called "socialist economy" in some western countries with those countries which call themselves "socialist" and whose economy is completely centralized and controlled by the state.

No system is perfect, each has its own trade-offs. That being said, one problem of socialism is that it can hide the true costs. The taxpayers had to pay for the lines to be put in place and continue to pay for maintenance, some of which I am sure is covered by the ISP leasing fees. Taxes cover many of the costs and so the true cost is more than $11 a month. It is $11 a month for those who access it. Personally, I think it is a very important distinction. You may not.

yeah, Sweden is socialist country in many areas and for many decades, but it kinda works so well that free-market evangelists never mention anything about it, they prefer talking about Cuba.

And when you hear Chinese immigrants laughing about how the whole world thinks they're Commies but they're actually National Socialists makes you wonder whether any labels are to be trusted anymore. Like Democracy.

Err, I get 100/10Mbps from BBB for 225 or 275/month (can't remember which) through my homeowner's association. IIRC, normal price is 320/month.Also worth noting is Bahnhof (of recent datacenter and delete-the-logs fame) do 100/10 for 289/month, 100/100 for 319/month.

My mother living in the boondocks of Stockholm (i.e., no subway, train or tram lines -- bus only) can get 100/100 for 500/month through one of the *private* landlord networks (i.e., not STOKAB), or 100/10 for 250 - 350/month.

Bredbandbolaget's prices are variable depending on the fastighetsägare

According to google translate, that means "property"...

There's a reason that Google Translate is a beta. Actually, it's the owner (ägare) of the property (fastighet).

Not a native speaker, but have lived in Sweden for the last 2 years and taken some language courses.

Back on topic: I live in Bagarmossen (south end of Stockholm, next-to-last T-bana station), and pay Bredbandsbolaget SEK 349/month for 24/3, including the phone line. Still a much better deal than what I had in Brisbane AU, where I paid Optus about 1.5 times that much for 3/1 connectivity -- and a 10 GB/month cap.

I still remember fondly when I rang B2 to get signed up and their response to my question about that last issue was, "What's a bandwidth cap? [*/me explains...*] Oh! [*chuckle*] But why would we do something like that?"

Connectivity in Sweden is no cheap at all. You're asking two different things here. Most swedes have fast broadband on the cost of shared bandwidth. They order 100mbit and its usually 4-6MB/s. That being said, its probably a lot better than in USA etc.
Premium, guaranteed bandwidth in sweden costs a lot more than for example in usa or france. Even if you order 100mbit you're still limited to like 200GB/month or similar. Go over that and you pay really a premium price for it.

Guaranteed 100Mbps for corporate subscribers in Stockholm costs around USD 810 (SEK 7000) without any caps. How much does that kind of bandwidth cost in the US and France?
Btw, I've had two residential 100Mbps connections. I might just be lucky, but at our old place north of Stockholm and at our new place, we're consistently able to achieve downloads at around 8MB/sec from TechNet.

I seriously doubt this is true, for at least two reasons.(1) All broadband providers have a minimum bandwidth guarantee (and I'm talking about normal consumers here). As far as I understand, it's mandated by law. In fact, they don't market it as "100 Mbps", they market it as "50 - 100 Mbps" or similar. E.g., Telia has a 50+ Mbps guarantee and Bredbandsbolaget has a 60+ Mbps guarantee.(2) As a previous employee of one of the larger ISP I have first hand knowledge of at least that company's delivered speeds. While a few customers do in fact receive the download speeds you mention, it's usually end-point related (meaning if you switch rj45 or remove your router, it's no longer an issue). Most customers are located at the higher end of the spectrum, 70+ or 80+ Mbps.

One group of customers which actually do have a large variation in bandwidth are DSL customers, where the bandwidth is very dependent on the length and quality of the copper lines. Another piece of evidence, anecdotal as it may be: I currently have a 100 Mbps subscription. When wired, and even through a somewhat crappy router, I usually reach about 90 Mbps.

The thing with ethernet is there is a mandated quiet period between packets, they are not generally cued back to back... plus, there is often preamble and post-amble info... the preamble is to "lock up" the receiver. Then, there is the header info associated with the packet... this is not data. The header info can amount to several percent of the data payload (depends on the size of the packet... often configurable)

The outcome of all this is that you will not get 100MBits of data out of a 100 MBit l

It simply means that if you, through no fault of your own (they usually require you to do some debugging, i.e. switching rj45, bypassing your router, and so forth), cannot reach the guaranteed speed when measured to a reference server, they'll fix it. (Oh, and it probably has to happen with some regularity - I don't think they'll send a technician if you got 47 Mbps just the once.) I actually don't know what happens if they can't, I've never seen that happen. You'd probably be able get a refund, at a minimum. Now, while they do oversell bandwidth, it's my understanding that this mainly applies access outside each providers' own net. I.e. you should be able to max out your bandwidth to the reference servers (commonly the ones reached through bredbandskollen.se). Don't quote me on this though, I'm sure there are other slashdotters with better knowledge of this.

If all their customers was always maximizing their bandwidth, my guess is that the policy would change, or rates would spike. There are no caps in place on regular broadband right now, that I know of. Though, if memory serves, the mobile broadband providers have caps.

I spent 8 months in Stockholm on a fellowship years ago (before we were married, honey!) and I've got to say, it was pretty close to paradise for a single young American. I was surprised to find that every single girl I met carried her own condoms. No "abstinence-only" education over there.

Actually here in the US, anything that isn't 100% rabid capitalism or 100% ridiculous and ill-conceived regulation is evil.

I'm not sure we've ever tried being reasonable about it. The public may get angry enough that regulation becomes necessary, at which point private interests ensure that it is constructed to fail its goal, either by shifting the evil around, or by making it so incredibly inefficient and silly that it becomes an eyesore.

The company is owned by the city of Stockholm and is not a private business. Stokab [stokab.se] was founded in 1994 and is owned by the company group Stockholms Stadshus AB, which is in turn owned by the City of Stockholm.

Imagine what would happen if all roads were owned by private companies. Would we ever seen an end to toll roads? Doubt it.

Some things, especially utilities, simply work better when public owned. Electric, water and yes, even telephone. And internet access isn't too far removed from a telephone utility.

I think the next time we hear about a communications company suing a municipality over their intention to install their own fiber in their city, I think the case of Stockholm needs to be cited as the reason why they don't want it and the reason the people should have it.

You could see an end to some toll roads. The toll would be paid for by the business the road benefits. Similar to how Vegas has cheap flights. If you were to build Vegas between LA and Phoenix and cut the time down from 8 hours to 2 hours and half way you could stop at a place of gambling, shopping and debauchery, would you take a plane (3 hours) or your car with a light rail augment(2 hours)?

Not quite. Even libertarians will tell you that the rights should grow with the size of administrative unit (with fed govt having least rights and individual having most rights). Socialism is the reverse system: the bigger the administrative unit, the more rights it has. This is municipal government building local infrastructure according to its needs. When you get down to municipal level, bureaucracy is much easier to keep in check through voting process. So this might not be so bad. Now, if a nation

That is very true. Just like healthcare there or in Canada, the people are paying for it, just in different ways than we do in America (not that we have internet access that is that fast available to the general public here in America). I'm not saying one method ("socialism" versus "free market") is better than another in this case, that's a different discussion, I'm just supporting what the parent poster said - that they do pay more than $11 a month for it!

Yes, but if you use that rational I pay more than $50/month for my DSL or Cable too. Think of all the lobbyists and laws it takes to keep a virtual monopoly. Think of all the government kick backs and discounts. The consumer is pretty much always going to get a better deal when you restrict the market to put all the competitors on an even footing, rather than restricting the market to provide a monopoly like we do. Under both "capitalism" and "socialism" (I'm assuming in this case we're talking about US vs.

IMHO, if there is anything the government should invest in, it is infrastructure. It's just a plain waste of resources having lots of parallel networks unless it is needed for redundancy reasons, for the same reason that you wouldn't build triplicate roads or railways between two cities. Add to that the vendor lock-in which usually follows when they're privately owned.

You can still have private companies build and operate the networks, if you think they will do it more efficiently than the government cou

"Paying for it once" is specious. Networks require ongoing maintenance, administration and upgrades. It is the gift that keeps on giving.

Of course it does, in the same way that water pipes and sewers cost money to maintain. The point is that we don't have to pay for the maintenance of multiple networks/water pipes/sewers where there could be one.

Because I assure you, someone is paying for all those UMTS base stations hanging in groups besides each other where a single would suffice. And as customers, that someone is you and me.

When one factors in the cost of exorbitant privilege (i.e. the eventual realization of the cost of printing money as a reserve currency) to the United States citizens, the ultimate cost to taxpayers in the United States is probably significantly higher than any day-to-day taxes anywhere else in the world.

To put this latent tax in perspective, the United States federal government has well over $52 trillion in outstanding obligations (over $12 trillion to foreign countries). That's $189,000 in present-day value U.S. dollars (i.e. relative to the basket of world currencies) that the federal government has spent on behalf of each citizen in the United States above and beyond what the U.S. federal government was taking in as taxes (i.e. they printed the money). When it comes time to pay this off, the amount will be significantly higher relative to the present-day purchasing power of the dollar, given the near certainty of exceptional inflation of prices or alternatively (or equivalently) depreciation of the value of the dollar inherent to paying off such a volume of debt. The "real cost" of this debt when realized is probably four times the amount I've stated there (based on observable data and projections from the fifty or so other countries that have become insolvent since World War 2).

It's worth noting that AT&T and others were "gifted" $500 billion dollars in the late 1990's to upgrade telecommunications infrastructure, with virtually no results whatsoever, I understand. Why this half-a-trillion didn't result in the same or similar subsidized infrastructure when compared to Sweden boggles the mind.

So to say Sweden has oppressive taxes is folly. Sweden does have day-to-day higher taxes per capita, but they have leaps and bounds better services (cheap and fast internet access among them, but also better, cheaper policing, health care, high speed rail, and education), and they have not burdened future generations with oppressive or odious amounts of debt.

High taxes do not give rise to cheap internet. The United States has exposed its citizens impossibly high obligations, way beyond what Sweden or virtually any other country does, but internet in the U.S. can be described as backwards in price and quality compared to other countries. Following David Lande's hypothesis, I'd say the reason Sweden has cheap, fast internet and the United States does not is culture: Sweden has educated people who elect a progressive government that spends money with accountability and forward-thinking reason; the United States has something different.

It's so funny how everyone outside of the U.S. (mostly Europeans) think they have such a forward-thinking, intellectual society. How can this be?

Because they compare themselves to the reactionary superstitions-based society we have here in the US?

Every major technological invention happened in the U.S., or by a European who, 9 times out of 10, moved to the U.S.

Even when excluding the inventions that occurred before the US existed, like the wheel, steel, and printing press, this is still patently (no pun intended) false:

Jacquard's Loom, which started the industrial revolution? Sorry, Not Invented Here.

The Automobile? While there are dozens of possible "inventors", none of them were in or moved to the US. The father of the "modern" automobile was Karl Benz, not Henry Ford.

The camera and photographs? While this too is hard to establish who was the real inventor, it certainly happened LONG before Kodak Eastman, by people who never set foot on American soil.

The lightbulb and electric generator? The lightbulb was invented in Russia, and the generator to run it by the well-known British professor Faraday. Edison was really only good at patenting, skimming what inventions had been done in other countries and be the first to patent them in the US.

Flight? You have to tweak the definition of flight quite a bit to believe the Kitty Hawk jumps were first. Almost everyone now acknowledge that at least Richard Pearse was earlier, and probably several others. And the invention, not the actual flight? That too is across the sea. Otto Lilienthal had plans for adding engines and propellers to his gliders when he died (the Wright brothers based much of their research on Lilienthal).

The electrical telegraph? Baron Pavel Schilling.

The telephone? Also disputed, but it's indisputable that Johann Reis demonstrated his Reis Telephone publically in 1861, 14 years before Bell. (In fact, the phone had already been patented and expired in the US before Bell re-patented it.)

The programmable computer? Konrad Zuse was first. But if you think of electronic computers only, the British Colossus preceded the American Eniac by several years. The invention? Babbage.

Antibiotics? Louis Pasteur. Who also gave us pasteurization.

The atomic bomb? Yeah, I'll grant us that useful contribution to mankind.

As for people moving to the US, that has nothing to do with this country's greatness, but the amount of money this country is willing to pay smart people precisely because they are such a scarce resource here. While Wehrner Von Braun, Tim Berners-Lee and Linus Torvalds all moved here, that doesn't mean that the US can claim credit for their inventions.

Yeah, my taxes here in Norway (same or worse as Sweden) is high. Then again, I didn't pay a dime in tuition for five years of a Master's degree. I don't have a health insurance, I do have a disability insurance but that's only if I become a cripple. The public transportation I use is subsidized. If you want to do a proper comparison, do it apples to apples after you've paid for equal services in the US. I do talk to people in the US, and the worst examples I've seen have been private companies using their l

I'm not a big fan of a huge federal government, but at the local level, cities and towns should have been building out the last mile of service instead of granting local monopolies. If building that infrastructure IS so expensive that no business would do it without the monopoly status, then it probably is something best left to local governments to fund/build and then lease out to whomever wants to offer services to the residents.

My Dad has this problem. He has the choice between the sucky local phone monopoly for DSL or the sucky local cable monopoly for cable.

Dragging the fiber can't be that expensive. I mean, compared to water or sewer pipes (which they can even be bunded with).What's wrong here in the US is a strong public distrust of having the government do anything, because the government may screw you over. So instead people prefer to give important tasks to businesses, who will screw you over.

Yes, the fear of government and of Government regulation can be quite misplaced.

It is well known that in some markets regulation is the only thing that keeps the market even remotely resembling a free market, rather than an oligarchy.

Now regulation can have its issues too. N o doubt that some government regulation is actively harmful. Some of it is well intention regulation that goes sour, which is pretty common considering that macro-scale economics is not a science by any means. Other harmful regulation is that which is supported by the major players in the regulated industry. In general that indicates that the regulation dictates what they would be doing anyway, yet makes it more difficult for competitors to enter the market, or compete with the big players.

In a similar way, having the government perform some function may be very helpful, or may be quite harmful.

Look at the United States Postal Service. People complain about them, but they function pretty well all things considered. The pricing on first class mail is definitely very competitive despite the complete lack of competitors. If the market were opened do you really think UPS, FedEx, or DHL could offer first class mail services at a significantly lower price? Probably not. Perhaps a few cents lower, but not much. The USPS does tend to be slightly more expensive than the alternatives when shipping packages, but that does not really matter, because they have competition there.

Overall the USPS works well. Why does it work well? Perhaps the most important thing to notice is that it is well insulated from the elected politicians. They can't continually mess with it, making changes all the time. It is not profit driven. The apparent goal is to net exactly zero profit, with income covering all the expenses, and employee salaries, upkeep etc, thus requiring no treasury funding. It does reasonably well at that, although they almost never actually reach that goal.

That goes to show that a government institution can work effectively. One that owns last mile infrastructure could also work well, if set up well, such that the politicians have little influence over it, it is set up such that it must price fairly (be this some sort of per endpoint, or bandwidth based pricing scheme, the important thing is that Ma Bell gets no better deal than Joe's DSL Shack), and be set up so that the net profit is zero (the all income covers infrastructure, maintenance, and upgrades).

But alas, the average American is to scared of the government to allow such a thing, and don't see the absurd television, phone, and internet pricing as a real issue.

It is well known that in some markets regulation is the only thing that keeps the market even remotely resembling a free market, rather than an oligarchy.

This is not in some markets. This is absolutely true in every market. A "Free Market" can't possibly ever exist in reality. Approaching that theoretical ideal is the best we will ever be able to do in that arena. A completely unregulated market will always be far away from a free market.This is easy to prove absolutely.

Name something governments do well, aside perhaps from national defense.

National Defense.Police.Fire Supression.National Resource management. (National Parks).Airspace management.Worker/Business relations. (When was the last time you heard of employees rioting and fighting in the streets. Used to be common before the government stepped in.)Airwaves regulation and leasing.Autmobile safety regulation. (Airbags, Seat belts, Padded stearing columns etc..)National Highway system.Airports.Bank Deposit Insurance. (FDIC).Public Libraries.Driving Regulations. (Standardized safe driving practices and enforcement).Street Parking Management. (Much cheaper than a parking lot most of the time and super easy).Science Grant Writing.Medical Grant Writing.Drug Testing and Approval.Food Safety Oversight. (The last few years was a great example of what happens when they lose funding.)City planning. (Go to Bankok and try getting anywhere. This one is huge.)Public Transportation.Baseline Medical Insurance for impoverished children.A social safety net so that to some degree the poorest in our population can feel free to change jobs and not let the economy completely devolve into a slave/endentured servitude in practice.Unemployment insurance.Tobacco taxation. (Reduces smoking use while not banning cigarettes.)The FBI. If your child is kidnapped or a bank robbed you want these people on your side.The National Weather Service.Air Traffic Controllers.The Public School system. It takes in EVERYBODY unlike a private school. Unlike my school (Private school) they don't expell students who fail a class or get caught with a beer. (shock and amaze, when you expell all the kids who fail classes your overall test scores go up!). They also accept vegetables and make their best effort to get them to an employable state at Burger King or stocking shelves. This saves the government a lot of money from having dependent adults who can't contribute to society.The US Coast Guard. (If your boat flips you want these people to be well funded.)

I apologize for the other million other government employees who also do a great job every day. I only have so much time to stand up for them.

All of the things GPP listed are things the government does well on a per-dollar basis, AFAIK. If you can show examples of private entities which provide any of the listed services more efficiently than government, feel free to do so. Please note that "X, a private entity, does Y, a listed government function, and X is more efficient than the government because private entities are always more efficient than the government" does not in and of itself constitute such an example; you'll need to provide finan

Internet access is slowly becoming another "must have" commodity. And as with water, electricity, telephones (the landline type), mail, public transport, etc. They are simply best left to the government to finance. Or subside.

If running water, electricity, or mail would be left only for big corporations to run, citizens of smaller (sub 10,000 people) cities would barely have running water.

Consider mail. Do you really think the post office wants to deliver mail to everyone? If the recipient lives in an urban area and the postman gets an average of at least 5 letters per mile, then it isn't bad. But when someone lives in the middle of nowhere and the postman needs to travel five miles per letter, then it simply isn't profitable. Yet people would rebel if suddenly half of the country wouldn't be able to receive mail or have electricity.

Companies are building up without the monopoly benefit. Here where I live, Comcast cable is a fiber backbone with coax last mile system, and Verizon fiber to the premises (fiber backbone and last mile, coax and twisted pairs inside the house) is promised to be on the way in less than four years, although it's expected in two.

Verizon's fiber is fast, but as half the customers get off of Comcast, that's more capacity for those who stay. Duopoly here we come.

My first thought was that because the city owns the entire network, much of the reason for the low cost is self-explanatory. But then I imagined if a similar arrangement were formed in the US, I would be extremely surprised if the same prices were attained. Local governments would likely see this as a source of income and either charge a similar rate to competitors, or possibly undercut their neighbors by a narrow margin in order to appear generous and possibly gain a few extra votes for the incumbents.
Does anybody know more particulars of this arrangement and local laws in the area? Is the portion of the Stockholm government that runs this program have any sort of "no-profit" legislation?

My first thought was that because the city owns the entire network, much of the reason for the low cost is self-explanatory. But then I imagined if a similar arrangement were formed in the US, I would be extremely surprised if the same prices were attained. Local governments would likely see this as a source of income and either charge a similar rate to competitors, or possibly undercut their neighbors by a narrow margin in order to appear generous and possibly gain a few extra votes for the incumbents.

No, that's Norway.Finland has the world's best Punk bands.Germany provides the best Heavy Metal artists.In all three cases, I think the native languages lend themselves well to the success of these genres.

What is the upstream like? Something that seems popular in various contries is selling more or less a WAN type connection. What I mean is you sell a very fast conneciton to the person's home, however there isn't the kind of bandwidth to back that up at higher levels.

Net effect is it ends up working kind of like a campus WAN. If you are on campus, you'll have probably 100mbit, maybe even gigabit to your desktop. You of course get those speeds to others in your building. However the building itself then has o

This is a prime example of the mistake people of any nation state thinking that any company, particularly one that's granted a local monopoly will in any way, shape or form act in the consumer's best interest.

This is a prime example of the mistake people of any nation state thinking that any company, particularly one that's granted a local monopoly will in any way, shape or form act in the consumer's best interest.

It's not usually a mistake made by the people, but rather it's what gets voted for by political shills at every level of government, be it municipal or federal. They are bribed or coerced into thinking that the "free" market is the best system in the world, and they lack the intel

Now, [South Koreans] can watch live TV on their phones. In the subway. And I can't get above 2Mbps on a hard line in my home.

I sympathize. The worst part is, those Koreans are probably paying less than you are for their superior bandwidth, while "Western" countries dream up schemes to "throttle", "cap" and charge you even more for less than you get today.

On the other hand I am a firm believer that if the "west" puts a high enough toll on the internet, some bright people somewhere will come up with an alternative - whether it be a way to transmit wireless from house to house in the town you live in, and lease fiber to connect the towns, or something even more creative no one has dreamed up yet.

The world has SEEN the internet, and the world WANTS free (or relatively cheap) digital communication. You can't un-invent something, ever. But I guess I'm just an optimist.

I don't think we'll see this in US. I work for a network equipment provider and we do xDSL and FTTH. Even when our customers deploy fiber technology, they still limit the pipe. With video becoming more prominent, they'll have to increase the bandwidth. However, the only advancement we'll see is if there were more players as opposed to only one or two choices.

This is exactly what I've been saying - to anyone that would listen, including the California Public Utilities Commission - should have happened in the United States. What sets the described situation completely apart from anything here is that the "people" collectively own the telecom infrastructure: the companies that built it were paid ad CONTRACTORS and not allowed to retain ownership of that common infrastructure.

The sad thing is that there are other examples of that here in the U.S., like out public highway system; we paid the construction companies (through taxes) to build the roads, but the ownership remains in public hands.

That is what SHOULD have happened with our entire telecom infrastructure, but we screwed up way back in the Eighteen Hundreds; we allowed American Telephone & Telegraph - remember them? - to build telegraph and telephone systems but keep ownership of it. That misperception is perhaps solely responsible for getting us in the mess we're in now here in the U.S. We actually had a chance to rectify this during the anti-trust proceedings against AT&T in the 1970s: we could have reclaimed the wires or forced the monopoly to become "nonprofit" similar to the USPS. What we did instead was to slice and dice the beast but let all the parts keep control of the wires in their new little fiefdoms.

Forget all the breathless FUD about "socialism": common shared infrastructure SHOULD be publicly owned. The fact that Sweden is a nation with a marginally socialist economy is quite possibly irrelevent; what is relevant is that Sweden observed and learned a bit from our mistake.

Stockab has fibers connected to municipal housing. That's about 20% of all fiber, and they cost more as both ISP and stockab get paid. The reason why it's so cheap is because of fierce competition between the different broadband providers. There was zero regulation and great tax benefits during the IT-boom era which led to a large number of broadband providers. That made a huge difference.

I pay (in Stockholm) about $7/month for a 100 Mbit connection and that's through privately owned fiber, not the municipal one. It also varies from city to city. In the case of Västerås (another Swedish city) they did actually build a full municipal fiber network and through laws and regulations made it a monopoly (the fibers, not the service). Prices there are about $30-40/month for a 20 Mbit connection.

I live in Stockholm, please tell me where I can sign up for a 100Mb/s connection for $11/month.
The blog post is pure nonsense. The uplink speed is not really that interesting. Sure you can get a connection with that kind of uplink but how does that differ from a 1Gb/s service?
Hell I can sell you a 10Gb/s service for 12$/month. It won't connect anywhere but it will give you a really cool uplink and you will a nice 10Gb/s to all my other customers in your appartment.

Name one price set in the economy, outside the price that government charges for it's "services", that isn't ultimately 'take it or leave it'? Even negotiated prices will reach a bottom and top during the course of negotiation. The fact is that if a price for a service is too expensive relative to the value returned, the customer simply won't buy it: even in the case of so-called 'monopolies'.

Unfortunately, there are those that want something for nothing and often times they use the law to intervene on th

Name one price set in the economy, outside the price that government charges for it's "services", that isn't ultimately 'take it or leave it'?

The problem with monopolies isn't whether a price, once set, is "take it or leave it." It's that they have much more power at the point when they're setting the price, which leaves the customers with the choice to "take it" or simply live without it. Customers don't have other options because there isn't meaningful competition.

People wanting to make laws that restrain the power of a monopoly does not constitute "theft".

But that's nonsense, because if the pricing weren't affordable relative to value customers would 'leave it' and the monopoly would shrink in size. If the prices were high relative to the costs, competitors would start to enter the market and investment would be there for the easy money.

Look at the history of Standard Oil and its pricing. Prices under the Standard Oil monopoly were very cheap relative to the immediate aftermath of it's break up. The breakup of ATT... did that help consumers? I haven't su

Exactly. By socializing the fiber pull, the gov't was able to give the people a true free-market when it comes to shopping for providers allowing the free market to actually work. This is what gov't is supposed to do when it meddles with business; level the playing field, let competition happen forcing companies to compete (yes, there will be losers), and allow consumers to actually win. It's monopolies that screw up the system, not having some socialist elements. When will people learn that the goal of government should be to improve the lot of the people, not to just to do the cheapest thing.

Just like the community re-investment act and the creation of government backed mortgages to ensure the 'less well off' can get loans housing loans from banks that otherwise wouldn't lend to them. Just like the Federal Reserve Bank keeping interest rates artifically low through much of the 90's and the first half of this decade.

All this was done to 'level the playing field' and make people's lives better. I have no doubt that was by and large the intension in these programs. And it worked for a while...

Stokab is a municipal owned company that runs most of the cables in the Stockholm area. Fiber is cheap to own and most of the conducts was already built for other utilities. The bedrock of Stockholm is solid granite and easy to tunnel.

There is no subsidized on the cable costs. The difference is the pay back time on the cable. Stokab probably have calculated a payback time equally the life time of the cable (20 years or more). And because they regularly have to replace there other cable infrastructure adding

When you say that there was no subsidy on the cable costs, the initial build out (the initial investment) sounds like it was subsidized. The issue if that was the case and they are getting a lesser payback than if that money where otherwise invested is that their act would have, perhaps in only some small way, depressed the effciency of the economy... that's not to say finacial disaster or maybe even anything noticable, but the growth on capital is a reflection of the efficiency of the use of that captial.

This made to whole thing silly, but it looked good if you didn't ask the questions.

Or, from a different point of view, the study showed that the system of putting fees on dumping and subsidizing recycling was working. What's wrong with government trying to arrange things such that generally beneficial behavior is also economically sound?

What's wrong is that the process of arbitraily influencing costs and prices via government fiat can actually mask not just real economic benefits and costs, but also the environmental impacts as well: indeed, if the economics, outside of the artifical fees imposed by government were actually compared, you might find that it is less -environmentally- sound to recycle than to landfill.

The report implicity was trying to demonstrate this point and doing so via economic means. In all the free market cost elemen

Well, of course almost all of it is subsidized. Stockholm has about 800000 households so even if 25% of those sign up, at 11$/month that's only a measly 2,2 million revenue/month. Obviously, there's not enough profit there to recoup the investments needed for building all that fiber that is probably counted in billions.

Instead, what is happening is that tax payers pay for the government to lay the fiber. Then the government leases the bandwith to ISP:s at a much lower rate than it cost to build who can then

It doesn't necessarily require a lot of subsidies. A large proportion of the fees paid for American internet access go to profits of the oligopolies who provide it; if it were provided on an at-cost basis, it would be considerably cheaper.

That doesn't mean it's not intellectually dishonest to only count the price the end-user pays if a larger fraction is paid out of their taxes.

The question is whether it's more dishonest than corporations bribing their ways to monopolies, lying to the legislature, and cheating the consumers.

I can't think of a single example where infrastructure didn't become more expensive through privatization. Thus I don't mind subsidising a little, because even if I lose that money, I will still end up paying far less th

Ok, this is not quit so. Fiber connections are not so widespread as people imagine, and in fact most of the people I know use ADSL 24/1. At my place it costs me around 700Kr (~U$87) for 100/100 with Telia. Some people can get it for around 300Kr, but it depends very much where you live.

Let's stop this nonsense, please.

Nonsense? Most people in the US would have to pay ~$100 for 24/1 ADSL (if it's even available which is EXTREMELY unlikely).

Most people pay ~$45 for 8/1 cable. To get 100/100 we're talking thousands of dollars in 99.999% of american cities.